Less Than A Year
by M. L. Chi
Summary: -SLOW UPDATES/HAITUS- Kagome will probably never see her seventeenth birthday. Sesshomaru is a gardener who is forced into taking care of a sickly heiress. Will these two learn how important it is to live life to it's fullest or will they forever regret not being able to save eachother. They say 'till death do us part but this makes it take a new meaning.


Kagome coughed, her lungs burned and her throat felt worse with every little cough. She had always been sickly, ever since she was born and had never been allowed to go to school because of that. She was forced to sit with Mrs. Orchirds, her private tutor, who had the scratchiest voice, the most beaky nose and the most wrinkles she had seen on anyone. Maybe it was normal for someone from America, Kagome didn't know though; she had always been locked up in her house with all the maids and butlers.

Right now, she was sitting on her bed reading over her mother's diary from around the time she had been born. On every single entry before her birth her mother sounded so excited and happy. Exclamations marks were at the end of every sentence. Mrs. Higurashi, her mother, would go on and on about what she would make her baby wear, what she would name her and what she hoped she would look like.

Then there were the entries after her birth. The pages weren't filled with happiness or excitement anymore but bitterness and sadness. There were dried tear stains on the page, indicating her mother had been sad over the fact that her precious daughter would most likely not live to see her first birthday. Kagome had lived sixteen years but everyone knew her days were numbered.

Her eyelashes began to feel heavy and her eyes were even itchier. She blinked, her eyelashes brushing against her cheeks and the tears that clung to them sliding down her rosy cheeks. She didn't want to die, Kagome wanted to live, fall in love, get married and have children. That was impossible though if she wanted to live to thirty. Her body would most likely not be able to withstand giving birth to a child. If it did her own child would most likely be very sickly as well and she didn't want that for anyone most certainly not a child of hers.

She shut the diary and set it on her polished oak bed-side table. Her back hit the white, silken sheets of her bed with 'plop' as she let the sobs rack her body. The crying most-likely did nothing for her body, maybe even more harm but the tears felt so good to her; they reminded her she was human and not some fragile china doll.

"I don't want to die," she whispered through the tears. She wasn't sure if she said it again but she knew that one line repeated through her head over and over again. In the background she could vaguely hear the door opening but she did feel the shaking of one of the maids, Kikyo, her mind supplied for her.

"Lady Kagome, please stop crying, it will only make the condition worse," Kikyo said. Kagome could honestly say that Kikyo was her best, if not only, friend she had. Kagome cracked open her eyes and peered into Kikyo's intense gaze. Kagome latched onto her friend in a big bear-hug and cried harder. Kikyo must have realized that Kagome needed to cry to feel better and put her arms around the sickly girl in hopes of comforting her.

"Kikyo, I don't want to die," she whispered. Kikyo continued patting her back but gave a small nod. Kikyo could understand that, her younger sister Kaede had been very sick for a time being and she had continued to say that she didn't want to die and things similar but Kaede hadn't been born with it and she had cleared up after six months. Kagome on the other hand…

"I know Kagome; no one wants to die, especially without ever really living life, but if that's what the Kamis fated…" Kikyo trailed off, not wanting to finish. Though Kagome could be a brat and Kikyo, at first, had considered her spoiled, she had come to feel like Kagome was her own kin, a sister in a way.

"Why are they this cruel though, never allowing me to see the world outside?" Kagome asked even though she knew Kikyo didn't have the answers to that. Kagome was no longer sobbing but there was a sniffle here and there.

"At least you were born into a rich family and you got to live even if it was a sheltered and protected life." Both knew they were speaking as if Kagome was on her death bed and seconds away from death but they didn't mind anymore. Kagome was most likely not going to see her seventeenth birthday with as bad as her condition was getting.

"Kikyo none of that stuff matters if I didn't get to ever be outside or do anything for anyone. The only thing I've done is be a pain to everyone who tries to help me," she said with a dry chuckle at the end. Who could blame her? Sometime she felt as if she was the bane of all her doctor's existence, especially doctor Naraku who was her current doctor.

"Well your right about being nothing but trouble but I think people have gotten use to that. Anyways your mother will be home soon so why don't we get you dressed in something nice and we can make decorate the cookies I made for her?" Kikyo suggested knowing that doing something for someone would probably do her some good.

"All right!" Kagome said with a new sense of purpose. Kikyo stood and helped Kagome off her bed. The maid rushed over to Kagome's closet and rifled through it some before pulling out a beautiful green dress that reached the knees and had sleeves that reached the elbows. She helped Kagome out of her sleepwear and into the dress. The two girls then rushed down the stairs in a flurry of giggles and ran to the kitchen.

"Kagome can you go over to that pantry and grab the frosting," Kikyo asked in a sing-song voice. Kagome giggled some more, knowing that Kikyo had something up her sleeve. She opened the pantry doors as was greeted by no frosting.

"Kikyo, darling, are you certain about the frosting being here?" Kagome asked. Kikyo came up behind Kagome and gasped. Evidently this hadn't been planned by the devious maid.

"Well I could have sworn that it was here. I guess someone stole it," she said before walking over to the door to the storage room where some more frosting would be, trying to think of who would've stolen the frosting. There was Shippo, a boy who kept a fox-tail with him everywhere he went, there was also Inuyasha, a troublesome boy around her and Kagome's age who was Kagome's little brother's personal butler and there was also that gardener no one knew much about. Kikyo had seen him snooping through kitchen before and Sango, a cook had said he had a bit of a sweet tooth.

When Kikyo had retrieved the icing she handed some to Kagome and the two girls decorated the cookies along with themselves. After laughing their heads off and getting cleaned up, Kikyo and Kagome placed the cookies on some plates just as Mrs. Higurashi walked in.

"Kagome you should be in your room," was the first thing out of Mrs. Higurashi's mouth. Both Kikyo and Kagome knew it would be that way. Even though they knew that, both girls could help but be mad. What kind of mother doesn't say 'It's good to see you darling,' or 'You made cookies, thank you dear." She hadn't even said it nicely.

"Momma, we made cookies," Kagome said, fighting back the tears again at her mother's cold attitude towards her. Reading her mother's diary always made her forget the fact that she wasn't very kind to her.

"So? Have you even taken the medicine the doctor prescribed?" he mother asked. Kagome shook her head and was about to say why when Mrs. Higurashi said something else. "Go to your room Kagome, you are not to leave it unless I say so."

"Why?" Kikyo said which surprised both Mrs. Higurashi and Kagome. "Why should Kagome be forced to go to her room without good reason? You do realize that your own daughter is dying before your eyes, right?"

"I know that, _Kikyo_, and that's why. I don't want to see Kagome die and so she can be locked up in her room and die without me ever having to see it," Sotami, Mrs. Higurashi, said with bitterness. Kagome felt one tear slide down her face. She knew her mother despised her but she had never been so upfront about it.

"Drop dead Sotami," Kagome said with a new fire, a fire of pure rage and hatred.

"Kagome, that is out of line. Go to your room," Sotami said. Kikyo, getting over her initial shock of Kagome's comment, stuck her tongue out at Sotami.

"No, _mother_, I'm not going to go to my room just because someone tells me. You can forget that you ever had a daughter because I'm leaving," Kagome said, shocking the two of them.

"Oh yeah?" Sotami challenged. She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at her daughter. "You know that if you don't stay here you will die much sooner, right?"

"I do know that, _Sotami_, but I would rather live life to the fullest than waste away, even if it means it's a short life," she said. Sotami laughed, all her despise and hatred heard through it.

"Oh yeah, then with who?" she asked and laughed even harder when she saw Kagome's worried face. At that moment a man with thigh-length, silver hair and golden eyes who was wearing mud-covered overalls, a white long-sleeved shirt underneath and black boots walked in. He stopped when he saw the scene before him and was about to high-tail it out of there when Kikyo spoke up.

"Kagome's going to live with him," she said, pointing at the new-comer. Sotami laughed harder, knowing that the two girls hadn't thought this far and so they were now dumping it on the gardener.

"Oh really? Well then, I guess you need some time to pack so I'll leave you two it," she said before walking out of the room, laughing harder than she ever had before. The gardener looked at the two girls with a look that yelled 'What the hell is going on?'

"Now then, care to explain," he said when the laughing could no longer be heard. Kagome and Kikyo looked at him with big, pleading eyes and quivering lips, melting his insides entirely. Luckily he didn't really show his emotions on the outside.

"Well we were having an argument with Lady Sotami and you see things got out of hand and Kagome said she was leaving and then her mother asked her where too and well, we were just making stuff up on the spot and you just happened to waltz in and…" Kikyo said before trailing off. The gardener nodded, thinking of all the ways this could possibly go wrong.

"And am I expected to let her," he said, gesturing to Kagome, "live with me?"

"Well that would be helpful," the girls said in unison. The gardener sighed, since when was it his duty to baby-sit a spoiled brat.

"Can she take care of herself," he asked Kikyo, acting as if Kagome wasn't standing next to her. Maybe it wouldn't be too bad.

"Yes I can," Kagome said bitterly. She was seriously wishing time would turn back and Sango would've walked in instead of whoever this was.

"Fine," he said before turning on his heal. "You have thirty minutes to pack."

* * *

Hello, yet another new project. Tsk, tsk...

Well I love if you could drop a review, maybe even tell me an idea but it's okay if you don't. Anyways hope you enjoyed, tell me what you loved/hated in a review and thanks for stopping by.

Disclaimer: I own nothing. This is purely for entertainment purposes only and I know that all the rights belong to Mrs. Rumiko Takehashi.


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